Fisk not sure what motivates suicide bombers, sure it's Bush's fault

Fisk's latest at the Independent tackles a subject of some interest: "The cult of the suicide bomber." Here is a typical passage:

. . . when my companion urged Khaled to remain alive for his mother's sake – reminding him that the Prophet himself spoke of the primary obligation of a Muslim man to protect his mother – the woman was close to tears. She was torn apart by her love as a mother and her religious-political duty as the woman who had brought another would-be martyr into the world. When my friend again urged Khaled to remain alive, to stay in Sidon and marry – eerily, the muezzin's call to prayer had begun during our conversation – he shook his head.

Not even a disparaging remark about those who would send him on his death mission – that they were prepared to live in this world while sending others like Khaled to their fate – could discourage him. "I am not going to become a 'shahed' [martyr] for people," he replied. "I am doing it for God."

It was the same old argument. We could produce a hundred good ways – peaceful ways – for him to resolve the injustices of this world; but the moment Khaled invoked the name of God, our suggestions became irrelevant. Rationality – humanism, if you like – simply withered away. If a Western president could invoke a war of "good against evil", his antagonists could do the same. [...]

Here are the closing paragraphs:

[...] It will be many years before we have a clearer idea of the number of bombers who have killed themselves in the Iraq war – and of their origin. Long before The Independent's total figure reached 500, al-Qa'ida's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was boasting of "800 martyrs" among his supporters. And since al-Zarqawi's death brought not the slightest reduction in bombings, we must assume that there are many other "manipulators" in charge of Iraq's suicide squads.

Nor can we assume the motives for every mass murder. Who now remembers that the greatest individual number of victims of any suicide bombing died in two remote villages of the Kahtaniya region of Iraq, all Yazidis – 516 of them slaughtered, another 525 wounded. A Yazidi girl, it seems, had fallen in love with a Sunni man and had been punished by her own people for this "honour crime": she had been stoned to death. The killers presumably came from the Sunni community.

One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.

You'll want to read the rest--not for the analysis, which is incredibly shallow and Bush-obsessed--but for the statistics, which are indeed staggering.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: terror, Islam, Iraq, Fisk